Vintage Bottles − An ATC set for Scrap Africa August Mood Board 77

Hi! The lovely August mood board at Scrap Africa inspired me to try my new Art Journey set of stamps with vintage bottles.



Here's the beautiful blazing purple/violet mood board, with so many possible ideas of inspiration! I was particularly inspired by the bottle theme, obviously, plus the watercolour flower painting on the top right that made me think of making a painterly background with dye inks.

Did you know that you can join the Scrap Africa challenges with any kind of paper crafting, be it layouts, cards, ATCs or off the page projects?



I am also joining the challenges at Lost Coast Designs Blog, where the monthly theme is Watercolor Background, and the Artistic Stamper, with Anything Goes.



The watercolour effects of my ATC backgrounds are made with Distress Inks. Both that and the stamping technique I used were taught by the Dutch stamping artist Liesbeth Fidder at one of her popular workshops in Finland last spring. Liesbeth showed us how to make a watercolour looking background with Distress Inks, a spray bottle of water and an acrylic block. Until then, I must admit I had not used my few Distress Inks a lot, since I prefer pigment or permanent inks for stamping of actual images. I know there must be so many ways to use them that I just haven't thought of, and this definitely became a favourite!

I also like that there are more bright colours available, and the mini pads that are more economical to get in many colours. When I bought my first Distress Inks, they were mostly in earthly shades (which I normally love, too, but with this technique, the brighter colours really get to shine!)



I made the larger piece of paper into ATC sized cards at this point and stamped the bottles with black Staz-On. The next thing was to remove the background colour from the image area with chlorite. As said, all of this I know thanks to Liesbeth, who is also a very nice teacher in addition to being a great stamping artist. I warmly recommend joining her workshops if you ever get the chance!

For those of you who live in or near Finland, Liesbeth's workshops have been organized by Askartelu Amalia in Espoo, in case you are interested!

For a finishing touch, I just added a bit of Inka Gold in Turquoise and Violet in the borders and corners.

Here are the cards one by one. They are all available for trade, and I'll update when they aren't anymore. Feel free to ask here in the comments or wherever you see me in social media!

1 and 2


3 and 4


5 and 6


Thank you for looking! I look forward to trading these! (I'm in Finland, but international mail is fine, too.)

Moon Faces − ATCs for Scrap Africa Sketch 74

It's a new month and a new sketch challenge at Scrap Africa! I made a dreamy set of ATCs with a focus on these lovely vintage bottlecap images, or round inchies as they are also called. I think they are also moon faces, so that's how I named the set.



This is our sketch at Scrap Africa - you're most welcome to pop in and see what the other DT members did, and even better if you join yourself!



This month, we also have some very exciting news for all friends of Scrap Africa challenge. As of this month, the challenges will run for an entire month, so you will have lots of time to play along and prepare your entries. Double the time and double the fun!



I was also inspired by the space themed On the Milky Way challenge at ART-Bazarchik.



The background is made with stamping, mists and layered strips of leftover papers.



The Photo Faces collage sheet was bought from an Etsy shop called TinTeddy and it has altogether 48 different faces. I think I'll be using these a lot! I'm lucky to have a round inchie punch just the size, and I gave them a polished finishing with Glossy Accents glue.


1 (available for trade) and 2 (I'll keep this one that's gone scarfaced with the bubbles!)
Edit: These are all traded now, but I have other ideas for using these faces, so there will be more ATCs soon!


3 and 4 (both available) Edit: traded.

Thanks for taking a look and happy weekend everyone!